Sarah also interviews Augustine Kong of the Big Data Institute at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom about his Science paper on the role of noninherited “nurturing genes.” For example, educational attainment has a genetic component that may or may not be inherited. But having a parent with a predisposition for attainment still influences the child—even if those genes aren’t passed down. This shift to thinking about other people (and their genes) as the environment we live in complicates the age-old debate on nature versus nurture.

The dangers of dismantling a geoengineered sun shield and the importance of genes we don’t inherit: Stories on how the planet would react to the collapse of a humanmade solar shield, and the influence of our parents’ genes on us—even when we don’t inherit them